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Monday Matters: Alma Native New Superintendent Of Mississippi River State Park

Monday Matters: Alma Native New Superintendent Of Mississippi River State Park

Submitted Photo / Kristina Root-Carranza, originally from Alma, was recently named superintendent of Mississippi River State Park, the newest park in the state's 52-park system.

Monday Matters: Alma Native New Superintendent Of Mississippi River State Park

Submitted photo / Beech Point Campground on Bear Lake offers 17 camp sites, 14 with electric and water hook-ups, in the newly dedicated Mississippi River State Park near Marianna. Alma native Kristina Root-Carranza was recently named the new state park's superintendent.

Alma native Kristina Root-Carranza is experiencing a bit of geographical adaptation these days as she settles in to her new surroundings on the other end of the state.

The 2002 graduate of Alma High School, who grew up crawling the crags and inspecting bats at Devil’s Den State Park, now cruises Crowley’s Ridge and walks among the cypress knees as the youngest superintendent of Arkansas’ newest state park.

Mississippi River State Park, a 550-acre fishing and birding oasis in the St. Francis National Forest just southeast of Marianna in Lee County, was dedicated a state park in May through a special use permit from the U.S. Forest Service.

The new park’s Beech Point Campground on Bear Lake was renovated in fall 2010, picking back up on a project that began in 1966 to create a park in that national forest. It is now one of 52 state parks that the State Parks Division of the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism manages.

At 29, Root-Carranza is the youngest park superintendent among a new crop of state park superintendents. Tamara Lunsford, who replaces Root-Carranza at Daisy State Park, Sam Adams at Delta Heritage Trail State Park and John Stewart at White Oak Lake State Park are three of Root-Carranza’s colleagues in this latest generation of park leaders.

“Many of us started in the 1970s, and several are retiring,” Arkansas State Parks Director Greg Butts said. “We’ve seen 36 uniform changes since July 1, 2012. Some are leaving, but many are retiring.”

Root-Carranza relieves John Morrow, who was promoted to superintendent of the Ozark Folk Center State Park in June. Still in her 20s, she began her career with the state parks service just six years ago as a park interpreter for Pinnacle Mountain State Park. Pinnacle, near Little Rock, is the system’s most used park. There, she taught visitors about the wildlife, the Trail of Tears and the Ouachita Mountains. In 2010, she became assistant park superintendent at Daisy State Park on Lake Greeson near Kirby in southwest Arkansas.

Stewart, who visited the newest park when the visitor center was dedicated in May, said it is “very impressive” and “will do some good for the area.”

“It’s a nice change of scenery,” Root-Carranza said. “Daisy State Park was hard to leave, but Crowley’s Ridge is really a significant geological feature. I wasn’t really expecting to see a lot of big trees here, but there are. Growing up in the Fort Smith area, I always thought of the Delta as just rice and cotton.”

In her memoir “Born in the Delta,” Margaret Jones Bolsterli observed the subtle senses Delta natives have when it comes to geography. She tells a story of seeing a group of birders from the hills go right past a “ridge” when given directions to an area. That “ridge” was nothing more than a bump in the land to most, but to Delta residents, it was clearly seen as a high point.

As the new superintendent develops her Delta senses, she and her husband, Enrique, will have a different variety of Southern life to explore with the nearby music Meccas of Helena and Memphis. Historically, the area near the park is a root of exploration, with the meetings of the St. Francis, Arkansas and Mississippi rivers. Not far away, near Brinkley, is the Louisiana Purchase State Park. This marks the point from which all of the land in the Louisiana Purchase was surveyed.

A self-described “jack of all trades” with specialized knowledge of geology, botany, astronomy and Arkansas wildlife, Root-Carranza is also a certified and commissioned law enforcement officer. She graduated from the Arkansas Law Enforcement Training Academy in 2009.

Before graduating from the University of Central Arkansas in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in environmental science, Root-Carranza had considered working for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. As a student in high school, she was always interested in taking part in the science fair, once making it to an international competition for a forestry project.

“She has always been interested in biology,” says her mother, Pat Sears, who works at Fort Smith Radiation Oncology. “She spent a lot of time on her belly in that cave at Devil’s Den.”

Nature is at the heart of Root-Carranza, but being able to share it with people completes her personality.

“I guess my favorite part about it is getting to meet with the people who come out to the park,” Root-Carranza said. “I like that aspect of just sharing the outdoors with them and being able to introduce people to something they may have not seen before.”